From the Unitarian leaflet A Faith Worth Thinking About: “Unitarians do not claim the right to define God for others. These are some of the ways in which they describe and experience God
- As a universal father or mother
- As a unifying and life-giving spirit – reflective of both masculine and feminine
- As the source of all being, within which the creative process is unfolding
- As a primarily inward reality – the “still, small voice”
- As a symbol for the noblest visions and aspirations of humankind – the standard against which to measure ourselves
- As a ‘great mystery’ about which little can be said.”
So far as belief in a personal God is concerned, I believe in some Being, whether you call Him / Her / It “God” or “Mother of All” or “Spirit of Life”, who is “out there” somewhere, certainly in the natural world, and who perhaps designed all natural things. I also believe in the divine spark within, that which the Quakers would call “that of God in everyone.” For me, this divine spark enables human beings to be moral agents in the world, reaching out to the rest of humanity and creation, and to that Divine Other, which some name God.
Existing
Some things I know exist;
a flower, a bird, a tree.
I can see them, hear them, touch them,
as I can touch my own skin
and know that this is me.
I cannot touch the sky,
a rainbow or the wind.
Do they exist? How can I
be sure that they are real
and not just my imagining?
I cannot touch the ‘I’ within,
the one inside my head
that thinks, and writes these words.
There is no proof that ‘I’ exists
except through what I said.
Does God exist? I cannot know.
But I smell a flower, feel the wind,
hear the birds or see a rainbow,
and then I seem to sense
an all-embracing presence.
Kath Forder